With Putin, Russia’s Main Exports No Longer Oil and Gas but Chaos and Fear, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 19 – Vladimir Putin has proudly and publicly made the export of chaos and fear a priority, and it is long past time to specify that Russia’s major exports now are not oil and gas but these destabilizing and disorganizing phenomena, Moscow commentator Igor Eidman says.

            He points out that “Putin has recently boasted” about Moscow’s contribution to tensions in the west and insisted that these must “persist as long as possible. And his former ideological advisor, Vladislav Surkov, has been even more explicit in saying that Russia is “’exporting chaos’” for “’disposal abroad’” (rusmonitor.com/igor-ejdman-eksportery-haosa.html).

            This shift has not attracted the attention it deserves either among the Russian opposition or in the West, Eidman continues, even though it has been going on for several years. Indeed, this “export” is “the main industry and main export of Putin’s Russia.” As a result, it is time to declare that “Russia is no longer a global gas station but rather a source of global chaos.”